Amazon blitzed past Wall Street’s high hopes when it reported its first quarter financials on Thursday, with the e-commerce giant more than doubling earnings projections.

After markets closed on Thursday, Amazon reported revenue of $51.04 billion and earnings of $3.27 cents a share for the three months ended on March 31. Analysts had projected $49.78 billion in revenue and earnings of $1.26 cents a share on average.

Amazon had a 43 percent year-over-year increase in sales, and its earnings more than doubled from the $724 million it reported during the first quarter of 2017. The tech juggernaut posted its 12th straight quarterly profit, pulling in $1.6 billion in net income.

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Chief Executive Jeff Bezos pointed to the company’s cloud business, Amazon Web Services, in his statement accompanying earnings. AWS hauled in $5.4 billion in sales during the quarter, a 49 percent-year-over-year increase.

“AWS had the unusual advantage of a seven-year head start before facing like-minded competition, and the team has never slowed down,” said Bezos. “As a result, the AWS services are by far the most evolved and most functionality-rich. AWS lets developers do more and be nimbler, and it continues to get even better every day. That’s why you’re seeing this remarkable acceleration in AWS growth, now for two quarters in a row. A huge thank you to all our AWS customers, and you can be sure we’ll keep working hard for you.”

Investors quickly gave Amazon a vote of confidence, with its shares running 7 percent to hit a new all-time high above $1,630 a share in after-hours trading. Amazon had already been on a breakneck pace this year, with its shares climbing nearly 30 percent to $1,511 a share since the start of 2018.

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The company will hold a call at 5:30 p.m. ET to discuss its earnings.

6 Tech Giants Shaking Up News, From Jeff Bezos to Laurene Powell Jobs (Photos)

Tech leaders are increasingly intertwined with the news business. While some want to support old properties, one set out to destroy a new one. Here they are.
Jeff Bezos – Washington Post

The Amazon founder purchased the Washington Post in 2013 for $250 million in cash. President Trump has called the paper the “Amazon Washington Post.”

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Chris Hughes - The New Republic

The Facebook co-founder purchased The New Republic in 2012, becoming executive chairman and publisher. However, he sold the venerable political magazine to Win McCormack in 2016, saying he "underestimated the difficulty of transitioning an old and traditional institution into a digital media company in today’s quickly evolving climate."

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Pierre Omidyar - The Intercept

The eBay founder is a well-known philanthropist who created First Look Media, a journalism venture behind The Intercept. Inspired by Edward Snowden's leaks. Omidyar teamed up with journalists Glenn Greenwald, Jeremy Scahill and Laura Poitras to launch the website “dedicated to the kind of reporting those disclosures required: fearless, adversarial journalism.”

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Peter Thiel

The PayPal co-founder doesn’t own a news organization, but he makes this list because he essentially ended one -- Gawker -- proving once again the power of an angry billionaire. Thiel secretly bankrolled Hulk Hogan’s sex-tape lawsuit against Gawker Media because he was upset that the website once outed him as gay. Hogan won the defamation lawsuit against the site that sent its parent company into bankruptcy, and Gawker.com is no longer operating.

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Mark Zuckerberg – Facebook

OK, so Facebook isn’t technically a news organization… yet. However, the company is preparing to launch its much-anticipated lineup of original content later this summer, and there are also signs that it's on the verge of becoming an even bigger media platform.

Campbell Brown, Head of News Partnerships at Facebook, confirmed last week it’s developing a subscription service for publishers willing to post articles directly to Facebook Instant Articles, rather than their native websites.

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Tech is increasingly intertwined with news, for better or worse

Tech leaders are increasingly intertwined with the news business. While some want to support old properties, one set out to destroy a new one. Here they are.

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